Practice of post-arrest DNA testing has already played role in local legal history

June 03, 2013|By Dan Hinkel, Chicago Tribune reporter

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday approved of police taking suspects' DNA upon arrest in serious crimes, a practice that has already made a mark on local legal history.

Jerry Hobbs had been sitting in Lake County Jail for almost five years awaiting trial for the slayings of his daughter and her friend when a man was arrested on unrelated felony charges in Virginia, a pioneer of testing suspects upon arrest rather than waiting for a conviction.

A DNA sample was taken from the man, Jorge Torrez, and it went into a national database, authorities said. It matched the sample from the scene of the Lake County double slaying, according to court records, and Hobbs was soon freed. Torrez, 24, awaits trial in the killings.

"It's in our interest to be able to track down criminals who have raped and murdered people," Warden said. "I really see no argument for not doing it."

The DNA test unraveled a case built upon a confession and undercut by conflicting forensic evidence.

Police immediately suspected Hobbs after he found his 8-year-old daughter, Laura, and her 9-year-old friend Krystal Tobias stabbed to death in a Zion park in May 2005. Hobbs, then a recent transplant from Texas with a long criminal record, denied killing the girls for most of an interrogation that involved several officers and stretched across about 24 hours, police testified.

Late in his questioning, Hobbs said, "I did it. Just write it down. Start this thing and send me to the judge," according to court records.

The charges against Hobbs were called into question after defense lawyers learned in 2007 that semen found inside his daughter's body didn't match his genetic fingerprint. But prosecutors argued that wasn't significant because the evidence could have come from her playing in a place where couples had sex.

Hobbs was freed in August 2010, a few months after Torrez — a friend of Krystal's brother and a former Zion resident who lived near the murder scene — was arrested outside Washington in a series of attacks on women, including an abduction and rape.

Torrez is serving five life sentences for those attacks. Along with the Zion double slaying, he is also charged with killing a 20-year-old Navy petty officer in the Washington area in 2009. Prosecutors have said they plan to seek the death penalty if he's convicted of that crime.

Lake County State's Attorney Mike Nerheim, who was not in office when Hobbs was freed and Torrez charged, said the case shows how prompt DNA testing can improve the justice system.

"This is an example of how exculpatory evidence can be found right away," he said.